Captain's Surrender Page 3

  Turning, she saw him at the far side of the quarterdeck, standing in splendid isolation, glaring up at something about the sails which affronted him. A heavy man, with a ruddy face deeply grooved with disapproval, he was the epitome of cleanliness from his snowy wig to his highly polished shoes.

  Though there were above fifty men visible, scrubbing, polishing, coiling rope, there was no sound of voices. The great ship forged her way onwards in silence through the bright day as though there were no live thing on board.

  Emily supposed that she should greet the captain, make the effort to thank him for getting them through the terrifying weather. Just because he was an ass didn’t mean that she should be, after all. So she braced herself and walked forward, prepared to be amiable. But as she passed the wheel, Walker turned and gave her a vicious glare—as nakedly aggressive and shocking as a slap in the face.

  Reeling away, exactly as though she had been slapped, she collided with her father, who had emerged from the cabin just in time to see the exchange. His face was white with fury and then green. Turning, he ran for the rail but could not quite make the distance before being comprehensively sick over the gleaming, proudly scrubbed decks.

  She rushed to his side, hearing an oath behind her and the sound of hurrying feet. By the time he had taken her proffered handkerchief and could look up, holding it to his mouth, a noseless, toothless tar—one of the common sailors—had come running, a large bucket of seawater carried effortlessly in his sinewy hands. As she helped her father to scramble back to his feet, the sailor gave them both his own scouring look of utter contempt.

  “Fuckin’ jobbernowl lubber. Which it took me fuckin’ hours this mornin’ a-scrubbin’ ’til me fuckin’ knees bled t’ get this clean. Will ’e fuckin’ clean it up himself? No ’e will not. Fuckin’ grass-combing arsy-versy silver-spoon-in-’is-mouth Molly Clap’s beau.”

  The feeling of being attacked from all sides was too much. Emily found herself shaking with fury, tears welling and threatening to fall, outraged on her father’s behalf and powerless to do anything about it. Her father, himself unshaven and cadaverous from a fortnight without food and still an interesting shade of green, had opened his mouth to deliver a cutting retort, when one of the officers strode across the quarterdeck in three long paces and cracked the sailor such a blow across the back with a stout cane that it drove him to his knees. A second blow landed on the man’s shoulder and a third on his face, overbalancing him. Tumbling backwards over the pail, he went sprawling—his eye already swelling—into the vomit. Covering his head with his hands, he cringed and whined as the last whistling crack drove into his belly, smacking all the breath out of him.

  Coughing and whooping for air, he curled up tightly, trying to make himself small, but the officer insinuated the end of his cane between shoulder and bruised cheek and pressed, turning the man’s head, forcing him to look up.

  “This is George Summersgill, His Majesty’s Comptroller of Bermuda. Soldier, statesman, our guest, and a man old enough to be your father. On every single count deserving of respect. You will apologize. Then you will further apologize to this young lady, whose ears have been offended by your profanity.”

  Angry though she had been, such casual brutality shocked Emily. She looked at the man who had come to their rescue with a sort of horror, while her father straightened himself and closed his eyes briefly to hide the terrible nausea and his weakness.

  “He is a…” the sailor muttered.

  Throughout the beating there had been no glimmer of human feeling on the young officer’s face. Now, for the first time, there was a touch of something more personal, guarded until it was almost indecipherable. Frustration, perhaps. “Bates, are you asking me to take your name?”

  Whatever it was, the sailor appeared to understand it. He closed his mouth and dragged himself to his feet. Staggering a little, he knuckled the side of his forehead that was not purple with spreading bruises. “Sorry, squire. I’m a crossgrained bugger at times, don’tee pay no mind. Nor you, fine missy. You want a thing, just call for Bates an ’e’ll ’op to it right smart, aye?”

  “Are you satisfied, sir?”

  Emily was about to say, “No, not at all,” when the most astonishing thing happened. Her father opened his eyes and smiled a weak but genuinely warm smile at the newcomer. “Thank you, Peter. You may dismiss the man, I accept his apology. The true injury was elsewhere.”

  The stick rested on the sailor’s blackened cheek for a moment, while the young officer looked down like an owner at his slave. “Get this cleaned up then. And, Bates… Don’t trespass on my kindness again. I cannot always be so forgiving.”

  As Bates swabbed the foul mixture of seawater and sick from the deck, leaping down to the waist of the ship to refill his bucket, the officer folded his hands behind his back and drew himself up. He was a young man who might have been handsome had there been any affability about his countenance, his eyes brownish green and stony as chips of jade. They softened as he looked at Emily and, tucking the cane under his left arm, he held out an elegant hand and smiled. “But we haven’t been introduced. First Lieutenant Peter Kenyon. My family’s estate borders that of your guardian. I must apologize again on behalf of my ship. We have none of us slept for the past week—running before the storm. I know that’s no excuse but…”

  “Please.” It was painful to Emily to receive this gallantry even while she could see the terrible marks of the man’s violence blooming on Bates’s face. She knew, of course, that men were violent, but the easy ferocity, coming on top of that dreadful, murderous glare, made her feel conscious of the scarcely leashed brutality on board. She was one of only three women among eight hundred men. Pleasantries that might have been flattering in an assembly room full of other girls became difficult to negotiate, almost threatening in this atmosphere. “Please, it’s quite all right. I’m an ignorant traveler in your world—I must expect to offend at all turns. I dare say I shall learn better in time.”

  She took the offered hand, surprised to find it quite clean—not bloodstained at all. Surprised, too, that he did not presume to raise it to his lips but only bowed over it civilly.

  “You should certainly have been told that the windward side of the quarterdeck is sacrosanct. No one treads there but the captain. It’s a tradition so old we forget sometimes that not everyone is born knowing it.”

  “Have I offended terribly?”

  “Not at all,” Kenyon said with conviction. On closer examination, there seemed to be something about him in conflict with Emily’s initial impression, and now his lean face broke into a small smile, self-conscious, rather sweet. “You were…prevented, after all.”

  “Prevented.” Her father broke in with a self-depreciating laugh. “Well, yes, and I am to suppose that being in the fire is preferable to being in the frying pan?”

  Kenyon’s smile widened. “I could name you several admirals who suffer from the same affliction, sir. It’s the neatness of the decks that occupies our minds. Next time, over the side or—in extremis—into your hat, and no one will think the worse of you.”

  This was a comfort, and receiving comfort at this young man’s hands was something of a puzzle. It was hard for Emily to reconcile the Kenyon of the cane with the Kenyon of the smile. She had almost considered asking him how he himself held the two together just as Walker’s voice croaked out behind them like the boom of a bittern.

  “Mr. Kenyon, when you are done toadying, might you spare a second’s attention to your tasks?”

  There had been a thawing, a change of those green eyes from ice to liquid, so slight that Emily noticed it now only when it was withdrawn, and Kenyon again became all edges—inhumanly cold. He bowed stiffly and withdrew, and she found herself relieved to have him gone.

  “Emily,” her father chided her gently, “Peter is a fine young gentleman, whatever you might think. Had he not intervened, I would have been forced to punish the man myself. Let these people show contempt to you once, and yo
u will never regain their respect.”

  “I understand, sir.” She curtsied, feeling grateful to him that he had at least tried to come to her defense against the captain and responsible that he had lost so much countenance in failing. But she wondered, nevertheless, quite where a bastard stood in the scheme of things. She was not wholly sure she was not one of “these people” herself.

  Thoroughly unsettled, and in the absence of other women to whom she could honestly open her mind, she decided to visit the ship’s boys where she would at least have the comfort of being an adult among children. “Father, I’ve been having lessons with the midshipmen. The science of navigation has become my fascination. Oh, and Hawkes wishes to show me his pet rat—he says it is the size of a kitten—may I go?”

  Her father smiled one of his sly, statesmanlike smiles—the one that indicated he already knew all her thoughts and approved, but could not, for reasons of good government, possibly say so aloud. “You will do whatever you please, my dear. As you always do. And I…I think I need breakfast, and after that the nearest thing to a bath that can be arranged.”

  He returned to the cabin, and Emily went down into the warm, dark fug in the belly of the ship, wondering about Kenyon.

  “Toadying” Captain Walker had said, and though she had no great respect for his opinions, this one had some plausibility. There was good reason for a man of ambition to toady to her father. If that was so, he had certainly succeeded in taking her father in, but he would find her a harder nut to crack.

  She had been Summersgill’s “ward” now for all of three months, but that time had been long enough to introduce her to the novel idea that she had become highly desirable in the marriage market. Men who had not looked at her twice when she was plain “Miss Jones from the milliners” positively fawned on Miss Summersgill-Jones. It had been flattering, at first, but that had worn off sometime after the second ball, when she realized that none of them were seeing her at all.

  It probably was ridiculous of her to want to marry for love, but it was not ridiculous to want to marry someone who would treat her well and make her happy. Lieutenant Kenyon, with his easy brutality and cold, shuttered eyes would do neither, and with his plausible manners he would deny her even the sympathy of her friends. True, he had not importuned her yet, but there had been an anxiousness in his look, and she felt sure it was only a matter of time.

  As she opened the flimsy partition door into the gunroom and made admiring noises over the rat, she touched the damp, working sides of the ship and thought that in this matter she, too, was a man-of-war, readying herself for the onslaught of the enemy.

  Summersgill, a distant but affectionate and dutiful father, had evidently decided it was now time to make sure his daughter was settled with a man who would offer her the life to which Summersgill felt she was entitled. She was sensible enough to be grateful for that. But when the time came, she fully intended to give herself to the man of her choice, not to be taken as a prize, whatever her father and his neighbors’ children might have to say about it.

  Chapter Four

  “Mr. Hawkes, let us suppose it is heavy weather, the fog is so thick that you cannot see the other ships of the fleet. What is the admiral’s signal to bring to and lie by, with headsails to the mast, with the starboard tack aboard?”

  “Um…”

  Mr. Hawkes was a boy who greatly resembled his rat, Summersgill thought as he sat in the gunroom reading his predecessor’s reports of French privateers about the shores of Bermuda, his fears of an invasion by American forces, and the roaring illegal trade in weapons smuggled to those same forces for huge amounts of money in defiance of all self-interest and principle.

  Across the table from him, Bess, now recovered, darned stockings and kept her head down. Emily was sitting in front of a slate, in common with five of the rapscallions known as “young gentlemen”. Boys who looked to Summersgill scarcely old enough to be in breeches.

  “Mr. Hawkes, please say something before we begin to grow barnacles.”

  “He’ll fire eight guns, sir.”

  “You’re on the reef, Mr. Hawkes. Your ship has just sunk with all hands, and when they write home to your poor weeping mother, they will say ‘if only he’d paid more attention in his classes’. And Mr. Anderson? If you wipe your nose on your cuff one more time, I will cut it off and give it to you as a keepsake.”

  The senior midshipman—a Mr. Andrews—in charge of this little school was himself a youth barely old enough to be at university, who kept the boys in check by his ready, sarcastic wit, without reliance either on the cane or profanity. On this first examination, Summersgill was satisfied that he could leave Emily here to be occupied without having to fear for her moral safety or her delicacy of mind.

  “On the starboard tack he will fire six guns. Eight for larboard. Enough. Everything away before muster, now.”

  The schoolroom was packed away in the blink of an eye, and the boys were neatening themselves, tensely earnest, when drums began hammering on every deck. The boys were out of the door before Summersgill had time to stand up, their teacher grabbing his coat with one hand and straightening his neckcloth with the other.

  “Is it a battle?” said Summersgill, wondering if he had time to run to his cabin for his sword.

  “No, sir, just muster.” Andrews stopped and looked at him with an anxious expression. “All hands to witness punishment. The ladies should go down to the hold.”

  “What is so shameful that I am not permitted to see?” asked Emily caustically, rising and putting her slate away in a large bag.

  “Not shameful, miss.” The midshipman spared her a glance—and now he noticed it, it was surprising how little the lad had looked at her and how lacking in admiration was his gaze now. Summersgill approved; the boy obviously knew his place. “Just an unpleasantness you’d do better to be spared.”

  He turned a dark, meaningful gaze on Summersgill. “It isn’t a fit sight, sir. Frankly, I’d keep the boys down here too, if I could.” Having struggled into his coat as he was speaking, he twitched it straight and shivered slightly. “I must go. Please, you really don’t want her to see. Believe me.”

  “Go down to the hold, Emily,” Summersgill said, yielding to the young man’s obvious distress. “You too, Bess. My wife will be glad of the company—you know how she gets in confined spaces. We must…respect the customs of the sea.” Privately, he felt that this was a great fuss about nothing. Emily—who had attended hangings since she was ten—was no shrinking miss to be spared the sight of crime’s due punishment.

  The silence on deck as he came out into the wind made his confidence falter. Hangings were social occasions, full of the common solidarity of the honest, and the sense of heightened life that came from being so near to death. Here there was none of that. The same despair he had felt onboard from the first now mantled a hundred fold over the gleaming lines of men, casting an irony over their beautifully laundered best Sunday clothes and a shadow over every resentful face.

  One of the gratings which covered hatchways had been set upright, and now Henry Addings, convicted of “answering back”, was secured to it with rough cables. The boatswain was handed a red bag and withdrew the famous cat of nine tails—a nasty-looking object with its long thongs greased so they would cut deeper.

  “Ready, sir.”

  “Five dozen,” said Walker with a look of anticipation. “And lay on with a will.”

  Henry Addings did not scream until the thirtieth stroke. By the fortieth he had lost consciousness and hung like a freshly slaughtered carcass from his restraints, a pool of blood spreading about his feet, white gleams of backbone and ribs showing through the lacework of his flesh. The boatswain switched arms to prevent himself from growing tired, the officers looking on with blank, indifferent faces. Walker licked his lips. Summersgill raised his handkerchief to his mouth and bit his forefinger. As a distraction, it did not help.

  “Jabe Aken. Maliciously and persistently slow in the execution
of his duties.” An undernourished-looking creature who walked away from the beating, whimpering and slower than ever.

  “Perseverance, Atkins. Last man down from the studdingsail booms on three separate occasions Thursday.”

  It dawned on Summersgill with horror that they were working their way through the alphabet. The deck was already aswim with blood, pouring into the scuppers and thence to the sea. The boatswain and his mates had taken off their shoes and rolled up their trouser-legs to stop themselves slipping in it. The wind had dropped away and the warm reek of gore rose over the quarterdeck, cut with ammonia as Atkins pissed himself on the forty-first stroke.

  “Joe Bainsford. Last man down from the masthead Thursday.”

  Joe Bainsford had the long plait, the silk scarf, and ribbon-embroidered trousers that had been pointed out to Summersgill as the identifying signs of a long-term career sailor—worth his weight in gold to the king. Hearing his name, an almost inaudible growl went through the massed ranks of men.

  “Arthur Berry. Answering back and slovenly treatment of the ship’s ropes.”

  Berry screamed from the first stroke, the noises growing progressively more and more bestial until Summersgill wanted to stop his ears, to close his eyes, to pretend he was back on land. No wonder Peter had shocked him so by displaying a harshness Summersgill had not known the man possessed. Appalled did not even begin to describe what he felt.

  The faces on the quarterdeck were hardly less inhuman than those in the waist of the ship, fixed in attitudes of sheer indifference. Only the boys—standing by their divisions—trembled or smiled as their natures dictated, the larval forms of the stern or gloating tyrants they would one day become.

  The count moved on too slowly, and Summersgill looked away to the sea for comfort. But even there this ritual was grotesquely mirrored. Sharks kept pace with the ship, their bodies blue in the clear water, dashing and snapping in frenzy at the blood.